New college students in Montana are commonly unaware of the educational and
career opportunities in aerospace science and engineering, yet they often
express a fascination with the U.S. space program and space exploration. We
propose to inspire their aerospace interests by implementing a new curriculum
for EE101, the required introductory course taught by the MSU Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department, using a small mobile robot system as the
teaching platform. Each student enrolled in EE101 will receive a
custom-designed robot kit, assemble and test it during the course, and use it
as the means to understand basic electronics concepts. The importance of
autonomous robots to all future planetary exploration missions is more than
obvious to our prospective students, so we believe this is an ideal area to
exploit.